Wall Street Journal: Festival of Denial (Excerpt)

May 10, 2001

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The tycoons, politicians and press stragglers who descended en masse for this week's Fortune Global Forum, sponsored by AOL Time Warner, publisher of Fortune and Time magazines, are flooding the streets and bars. But among the gleaming office towers nearby, Hong Kong's streets are teeming with khaki-suited police officers, reminding the spruced-up locals that all is not right with the world.

For starters, there are protests. Fenced off in playpen-size areas far from the Hyatt, yellow-T-shirted Falun Gong members and other discontents wave papier-m ché Jiang Zemin heads on sticks. Swarms of Hong Kong paparazzi and Western reporters elbow each other out of the way. But far from the self-indulgent juvenilia and carnival-like qualities of protests in the U.S., the demonstrators here are notably subdued, as if they are afraid of attracting too much attention.

You can hardly blame them. Leaving aside the abuse many endured in mainland China, Hong Kong sent strong signals in the days leading up to the event that this isn't the safe haven of political expression it was once assumed to be. In 1997, when the British gave the island back, Hong Kong became a special administrative region of China. On Monday, it became apparent what that means. Hong Kong police detained hundreds of Falun Gong members as they tried to enter the island. Many were held for hours, others were bundled up and put on planes back home.

Worst of all, though, was the response of Hong Kong's chief administrator, Donald Tsang. When asked about the detentions of peaceful religious travelers, he referred to Hong Kong's policy of keeping out "undesirable elements."

China's creeping encroachment on Hong Kong's unique status have not gone unnoticed over the last four years. There was the disturbing announcement a few months ago by the territory's strongest defender, Anson Chan, that she was resigning. Many had hoped that she would hang on and, that by force of her popularity China would be obliged to appoint her territorial governor someday.

President Jiang's visit has exposed the rub; this territory is run by people who are intent on representing Beijing's interests to Hong Kong, not representing Hong Kong's interests to Beijing. The Chinese president has spent the past two days chanting the standard "one country, two systems" mantra to roomfuls of potential foreign investors, who are only too eager to believe it. Meanwhile, official Hong Kong showered the visiting [party' name omitted] leader with the kind of Mao-style hero-worship he used to receive only on the mainland. On the night of Mr. Jiang's touchdown, a fireworks display that would rival Washington on the Fourth of July all but shut down the city for almost an hour.

Now, with Bill Clinton on the scene as well, an even uglier dynamic is emerging. The corporate big shots who make up the Fortune confab are here to benefit from not one but two "keynote" addresses, one from Mr. Jiang and one from the U.S. ex-president. But the tone and context have subtly shifted after the recent "spy plane" encounter with China and its tense aftermath.

Among the beaten-down liberals of the Western press and some of the less-clued-in business types, there is a nostalgia for the good old days of Mr. Clinton's "strategic partnership" with China. A Reuters dispatch gushed yesterday: "Top corporate chiefs called on Wednesday for a calming of tensions between Washington and Beijing, as a meeting between Bill Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin evoked memories of happier relations."

The trouble is that many Asian correspondents and China watchers, while maintaining a critical gaze toward the mainland, have seemingly found it difficult to reconcile Asian realities with their liberal politics. The result is media coverage that attributes the heightened tension solely to the tougher policy positions taken by the Bush administration. Eight years of Bill Clinton's "engagement" has created a new norm. The assumption is that China should not make angry noises. When it does, it's because the U.S. "mishandled" the relationship.

Such was the status quo bequeathed by Mr. Clinton, who saw relations with China through a prism of two primary domestic interests: fund raising and keeping his poll numbers high. The overarching strategy was to shake down Chinese-American business interests while keeping making sure the Democratic Party never ran aground on its traditional weakness with American voters--an inability to manage U.S. security in a dangerous world.

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In the fenced-off areas outside Central Plaza, where the corporate elite mingled, stood U.S. and British members of what the Chinese government calls an "[Chinese government's slanderous term omitted]." Indeed, this weeks detentions at the airport took on a new dimension because many of those sent home were carrying American or English passports, many of them paunchy white guys who belie the image of Falun Gong as some strictly Chinese movement.

The trouble with all the staged hoopla surrounding the Fortune Global Forum is the studied pretense, as maximized in the Clinton years, that the world's only business with China is business. Much of what the corporate types have built over the past 20 years in China is at risk from the very issues they try so hard to ignore. Human rights, international peace, rule of law and economic prosperity all add up to one question: Will China progress toward responsible, democratic self-governance?

Bill Clinton undoubtedly is getting paid well, but he cuts a poor figure by lending himself to what has become an overblown, gilded display of corporate denial. Perhaps he will yet redeem himself with his speech today. Nobody is betting on it.

Ms. Levey is an editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.